BBC pressured to suspend journalists who ‘liked’ videos celebrating Oct. 7 or wrote anti-Israel post

The BBC is under pressure to suspend two of its journalists accused of “liking’’ social-media videos celebrating Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack or writing an anti-Israel post.

“Any journalist who likes anything that is overtly racist is clearly not credible,” said John Mann, the UK’s independent adviser on antisemitism, to the Daily Mail in an article about BBC reporters Soha Ibrahim and Marie-Jose Al Azzi.

Nicola Richards, a Tory MP and officer for the Conservative Friends of Israel, was among those calling for the public broadcaster to suspend the two reporters during its internal investigation.

“The BBC have got a responsibility not just in the UK but around the world,” she said.

Ibrahim and Al Azzi recently wrote an article claiming Israeli soldiers beat and humiliated doctors during a raid at Nasser Hospital in Gaza last month.

The report led to international condemnation of the Jewish nation and has prompted the UK Foreign Office to call for a “full explanation and investigation” from the Israeli government, the Guardian reported.

But it has since been revealed that on the day of the Oct. 7 attacks by Palestinian Hamas terrorists against Israel, Ibrahim “liked” videos of people in Lebanon and Tunisia dancing and waving Palestinian flags and Egyptian soccer fans chanting, “We sacrifice our souls, our blood for Palestine,” according to the Mail.

She also “liked” a post Oct. 7 celebrating “the first of the martyrs of the operation” and a video explaining Marxist thinker Frantz Fanon’s justification for people to use violence to oppose oppression, the Telegraph said.

In another instance, Ibrahim — who has worked for the BBC for 12 years — “liked” a post from parliamentarian Jeremy Corbyn defending anti-Israel marches in which he stated that “protesting against the mass slaughter of civilians is not a threat to democracy.”

Al Azzi, who has worked for the BBC since 2019, described Israel as a “terrorist apartheid state” in a since-deleted post from 2018, according to Honest Reporting.

Executives at the BBC said they are now investigating whether the two breached the network’s social-media guidelines — but still insisted the network “stands by” their report of alleged Israeli abuses.

“We stand by our journalism,” network executives said in a statement to the Telegraph. “Those who have read our story will know the BBC has been transparent in telling audiences where and how information is corroborated and attributed, and where this has not been possible.

“We have provided multiple first-hand accounts, named independent sources, shared visual evidence and included rights of reply throughout, working to the highest standards of journalism.”

Camera, an organization which monitors media coverage of the Jewish nation, has previously raised concerns about the biases of BBC staff members who are reporting on the war.

There are “BBC staff members who cover the war for the corporation while their personal social media accounts clearly indicate that they are not impartial observers,” a spokesman for the group said, according to the Telegraph.

Former BBC Director of Television Danny Cohen has also accused the company of institutional bias against Israel.

“Their refusal to use the word ‘terrorist’ to describe Hamas was misguided and offensive, and then they doubled down,” he said on the “Unholy” podcast, according to Israel National News. “In my view, this reveals institutional anti-Israel bias and in some cases racism against Jews.”

He went on to say that he does not think network executives “take anti-Jewish racism as seriously as other forms of racism.

“You get the same line over and over again, ‘BBC takes this very seriously,’ ” Cohen said. “I think the senior management is more focused on dealing with the crisis than rooting out racism against Jews.”

In a statement, BBC executives said they reject “the suggestion that we are biased against Israel.

“The conflict is a challenging and polarizing story to cover, and we are dedicated to providing impartial reporting for audiences in the UK and across the world,” network executives said in a statement to The Post.

“Our own audience research shows that BBC News is considered the most impartial provider for coverage of the conflict. Recent research by More in Common echoes this and shows the highest proportion of people in Britain sees the BBC as neutral.

“BBC News will continue to listen carefully to all audience feedback”

Al Azzi did not respond to a Post request for comment Monday. Attempts to reach Ibrahim were unsuccessful.